Category: Spritual Life

Has God Betrayed You?

With relaxation of COVID controls in  some areas, a few other things are coming back into the headlines. That includes protests, specifically, I have noticed, in Lebanon. Not getting into the weeds of this (as if I’m qualified anyway), but I have noticed a common theme through these protests: betrayal.

It would be unfair to portray protesters in general as It’s-somebody’s-job-to-look-after-me folks (although there will be some of that). There is a sense of betrayal in much of it. They are angry with governments that have not kept their word; they have broken contract with their people.

Anger. What’s behind it? There are three or four trillion experts on this. I am not one of them. But it is fairly clear to  even a non-psychologist like me that betrayal, eventually at least, leads to anger. I say “eventually at least” because I am supposing there could be at first, or mixed all together with it, confusion, numbness, denial–all that stuff. Personal betrayal is horribly painful, especially if you realize that it may not just be that you find you didn’t really know the person who betrayed you, but it may be that you long projected on the other what you wanted them to be, and it turned out they were not that person. So add guilt, however unwarranted, to the mix.

Now consider the preceding paragraph and consider that it is God (or the universe, or however you might be inclined to think) who is the betrayer. It is basic to pretty much all thinking about a universal superior being that he/she/it is simultaneously all-powerful and loving. So why COVID? Why am I exiled in my own home? Why don’t have a home in the best of times? Just in how we are conditioned to think about God we are also set up to experience God as The Great Betrayer. Broke his contract with me, that one: “God, did I ever really know you?”

We are invited to get into the weeds on this. Some follow one who said, flat out, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Jesus said this, it should be noted, on the way to showing that he had some credibility about who is to be trusted in this life and existence thing, and how it will all turn out.

I get two main take-aways from this: One, do not, ever, let fear overcome you. Two (not necessarily in this order), love, no matter what.

Go ahead, be angry with God. Talking anger with God is like talking weather with a fellow human: It at least starts the conversation.

Beyond Our Imagining

Approaching Christmas, and the turn of the year, many of our thoughts go back, like, to a year ago. What were you thinking, hoping, dreaming then? You may find that they are the same things as now. The things you wanted to do, the things you wished were different, all that you wanted to change–maybe it’s the same. This time can be depressing for some. Maybe you’ve even gone through this cycle so often that you can’t imagine how things can ever be any better for you.

This is actually an opportune time to tap into a power that will help you imagine things differently, so differently that, instead of how things can ever get any better, what you can’t imagine is how great things will be.

Mary’s song (Luke 1:46-55) celebrates a God who has acted in the past, and will continue to act, to raise up the disenfranchised and downhearted. Mary–this is critical–can celebrate this God who has acted in and through her as both Lord of history and nature. That is, Mary is a key character in God’s acting in history at this specific time, and as Lord of nature in bringing about her remarkable pregnancy with this oh-so remarkable life in her. Most arguments about the existence of God focus on God as Creator, but Biblical faith celebrates God as Creator as an expression of experiencing him as sustainer and redeemer, a God who acts in a way that brings everything together: history, nature; it’s all one to him. In this way her song is, as is often pointed out, an echo of the Song of Moses and Miriam in Exodus 15, when God had acted in history and nature to deliver his people through the Red Sea.

The point is this: If God is experienced as sustainer and redeemer–as “re-creator” of life, bringing hope and new opportunity, it’s a no-brainer that he is also the creator in and behind it all.

This is the God who comes in Christ and through the power of the Holy Spirit into the very centre of our lives, at the intersection of our history and nature. The God of all power has acted in a personal way to make all possibilities open to you and me.

Your story matters. He wants to enter your life to give it new meaning and power and possibility, wherever you are in that story right now. You can’t imagine where that can lead.

Forced Pause

In music a pause is not just a break, but a significant part of the whole, helping to highlight and give significance to what is around it. Recovering from heart attack earlier this month, reflecting on illness and injury in this way – not something we would choose, but …

Limitless Life

I admire people who push boundaries, mostly. Athletes, artists, entrepreneurs–they all thrive on pushing the limits of what they can accomplish. And we all benefit somehow.

But there is a mindset that all there is to life is what we can accomplish in the here and now. The Easter miracle is seen as nothing more than a metaphor for going beyond ourselves, or something like that. What is missed is that at the end of what we can now see and hear and experience, there is a limit.

The Resurrection of Christ brings a new reality to this realm, breaking in from beyond and making a path toward it. In this we find life that is limitless, expressed in the here and now with limitless compassion,, limitless forgiveness, limitless love.

It is pride, the unhealthy kind, that says I will push the boundaries only of what I can do of my own strength and will, even if opening ourselves to something, someone, beyond ourselves means we experience what truly is limitless. But that would means accepting that pushing beyond boundaries as a gift. And some of us would rather stick to what we can do ourselves, thank you, even if it means we are ultimately limiting ourselves. Something to ponder seriously as we anticipate celebrating the defeat of what ultimately limits earthbound life.

 

A Clear Goal

I think I have figured out (not that there’s anything wrong with just enjoying it) one reason why the Olympic events ha. ve such appeal. It occurred to me right when I had switched back to Olympics coverage after hearing about the latest fudging and wavering from politicians (in this case, over a previously touted tax-sharing plan). Athletes have clear goals and do not waver from them. That’s refreshing. It’s also instructive, as well as inspiring for the rest of us. It also resonates with Biblical teaching in at least a couple of ways.

Paul the Apostle used athletic imagery in speaking of the Christian life. He spoke of pressing on toward the goal, and winning the prize (Philippians 3:12-14). There is hard work involved, but the essence of the enterprise is grace. In both spiritual and athletic life, it is a matter of making full use of what is received. Both also necessarily and happily involve teamwork. There is a team behind even individual events. And every Christian (and leaders especially need to acknowledge this actively) is part of a team (See, for example and especially, 1 Corinthians 12:12-31).

 

Attentiveness

gaslineup

Out for a walk, I noticed this lineup of vehicles (from the other direction as well, out of view) to get fuel. I surmise that there has been word that the price of gas is going up at midnight. So good for these people for being alert to this and filling up now. Smart.

But then I’m thinking, it is easy enough to be alert to changes that will affect me. How alert and attentive am I to conditions and changes that affect others? Do I act as quickly and decisively to come to the aid and support of people for whom some change brings a difference to their lives? Am I even attentive to those changes?

Photo: at Kingston Road and Harwood Road, Ajax, Ontario, evening of September 5, 2013

 

Authentic When and Though it Hurts

The Spanish prime minister is being criticized heavily for what is called a “cut and paste” response to the horrible train tragedy in the north of his country. He is not alone in this kind of thing. Either through awkwardness and fear of saying the ‘wrong’ thing, or just outright aloofness and insensitivity, there are those of us who seem to have a catalog of prepared platitudes and facial expressions for any occasion. This kind of approach might work in business, legal dealings and backroom politics, but I have even known and experienced it to be used in church circles. We certainly need to be more authentically human, which is to say Christ-like, with one another than that.

Forced Landing

Just read about the most recent occurrence of an airliner making an unscheduled stop because of an unruly passenger. This one was en route to the U.K. from Vancouver, but headed back to Halifax from somewhere over Newfoundland. A 51 year-old man was throwing water on passengers and crew, threatening the crew, and “acting strangely,” according to the CBC report. When the plane landed, the man was arrested and taken to hospital to be assessed.

That last detail, about hospital is important. When the plane was in the air, all that mattered was the safety of all on board and getting the man under control. Once safely on the ground, apart from the inconvenience to passengers (not to be minimized) and expense to the airline, there is a concern about this man, with whom everything obviously is not right. Literally bringing people down with him (from the sky) may, in addition, be a picture of what he is doing with people around him in his life, since it seems unlikely this episode just came out of the blue while in the blue. Of course he will have to face whatever legal ramifications await. And maybe that will be the beginning of a new part of his journey, for him and for all he knows.

Revealing (apocalypse of) Good

Thoughts drawn from yesterday’s message at St. Andrew’s Ajax:

The message was the second of two recognizing the reality of evil in the world,how Christ has dealt with this, and how he has offered to share with us what he has done. Yesterday the main point was that not only is evil real, but its effects are intensifying. At the same time, however, God is working good that is “gooder” than the bad is “badder.”

The message was drawn from a book that is criticized, understandably, as portraying God as one who deals with the violence of the world only with violence, in the extreme, of his own–The Revelation to John. With that very charge in mind, I pointed out the parallel, or rather contrast, between the rider on the white horse of chapter 6 with the rider on the white horse of chapter 19. The first is the rpresentation of conquest, leading to war, famine (or disparity), and death. The other, in chapter 19, clearly is meant to be Christ, “the Word of God” (19:13). On the charge of resolving things violently, it is to be noted that his sword is not wielded in the hand, but proceeds from his mouth.

So what if we see the violently powerful depiction of the defeat of what is against God as indicating the power and decisiveness with which God acts (and ultimately will act to defeat all evil), but not the form it takes? Seeing it that way, instead of the rider-on-the-red-horse of war of chapter 6, we have the rider-Word of chapter 19 producing community; instead of disparity/famine (black horse in chapter 6), the the sword-Word further brings a spirit of abundance, and life instead of death.

Community and a spirit of gracious abundance are both products of the Word lived, and are much needed parts of a lived out witness to God’s devastatingly powerful love, shared in a fearful, stingy, violent world.

Recognizing the Reality

Thoughts out of my message yesterday (April 14) at St. Andrew’s, Ajax. Audio of the message will be available at www.standrewsajax.ca.

Since there is a power that seems to try to destroy our happiness when we most have it, I decided to address the reality of evil in the wake of Easter celebration. As evidence and example of the reality of evil, I referenced the sickeningly disturbing recurrence of girls being gang-raped, subjected to further humiliation through cyber-bullying, resulting in their suicide. As I make these notes, there has been news of bombs at the finish of the Boston Marathon. We do not just have social “ills” and global “issues.” We face evil.

Arguably, the book of the Bible that most obviously (or at least most grapnically) deals with evil is the Revelation, or Apocalypse, to John. The context of the book is the brutal persecution of early Christians at the hands of the Roman Empire. As with what they faced, symbolized (chapter 13) by the beast from the sea and the beast crom the land, with the authority of the “dragon” behind them, there are forces coming together todsy, as in every age, to try to deceive us and rob us of union and peace with God. The deception today plays especially on our insecurity, and tries to convince us that we are not smart enough, pretty enough, good eough, or even worth while persons, without what the powers of influence have to offer, having instilled the “need.” It is curious today that as “brand” (think of cattle) names have come to be considered critical (who instilled this?) to our credibility, attractiveness, and success, so a “mark” was required in the vision of John for people to engage in commerce and get on in the world.

But as chapter 20 conveys, when we are joined to Christ, Satan is bound and unable to deceive us (the completeness of the 1, 000 year symbol), even while Satan is still loose in the world and wreaks havoc until all is fulfilled (the significsnce of the “little while” time period symbol). Whatever the language in chapter 20 may convey about future events, it always has this basic meaning for us, whatever the times.

Evil is real. That was underscored again today in Boston, as it is underscored every day somewhere. It has power to destroy and cause misery in this world, and we must spare no effort to limit its power and effects. But we will never destroy evil itself. We must place our trust for that in one who has already demonstrated his power over it. “Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God” (1 John 5:5 nrsv).